The enrolment paradox: social insurance, precarity, and digital platform work in China’s productive welfare state

The rapid expansion of China’s digital platform economy has exposed a critical gap in its contribution-based social insurance system, originally designed for standard employment. Despite recent policy reforms allowing platform workers to voluntarily enrol as ‘flexible employees’, uptake remains low. This qualitative study, based on in-depth interviews with platform workers in four selected cities in China, examines the reasons for this low participation and explores pathways for policy optimization. The findings show that low enrolment is not due to a lack of awareness but to a boundedly rational cost–benefit calculus shaped by an institutional mismatch between current policy and the precarious nature of platform work, compounded in some cases by informational constraints. Key barriers include prohibitive self-contribution costs amid volatile incomes, distrust of the portability and future value of benefits, procedural complexity and the prioritization of immediate financial needs. These factors are exacerbated in less developed regions but persist even in high-innovation hubs. The study concludes that China’s current ‘employer-less’ voluntary model fails to bridge the gap between the insecurity of platform work and the insurance system’s financial demands. It argues for more adaptive and inclusive policies to address this protection gap in China.